Historically, computer systems and databases have contained data in incompatible formats. As the organizations utilizing these systems and databases became more automated and computerized, the need to share data over computer networks, such as the Internet, became more and more prevalent. Due to this need, standard formats for the sharing of data were developed.
One such standard format developed is Extensible Markup Language (“XML”). XML is a very hierarchical data format, which includes a multitude of data structures having parent-child relationships. Due to the advent of this standard data format, many computer users have converted the aforementioned databases to the standard XML data format. The XML format also allows computer users to tailor their data to specific documents using schemas. Schemas provide mechanisms to define and describe the structure, content, and to some extent semantics of XML documents. For example, a financial services company may have its own schema defining the structure and content its XML documents.
With the ease of availability of the personal computer, many users are utilizing computer networks to access research and reference information. For example, personal computer users may utilize a computer network to access financial information such as stock quotes or information typically found in reference books such as a dictionary or thesaurus by typing in a query into the computer. Currently, accessing such information is a multi-step process. For example, a user wishing to insert financial information in a word processing document would open a browser, retrieve the desired information, and copy and paste that information directly into the document. Furthermore, often these users find it desirable to receive results to a query for information in a “rich” data format for presentation to the user via a graphical user interface. For example, the results of a financial information query may include a graph showing changes in the price of a stock over the last thirty days. However, computer networks communicating using XML are unable to present “rich” data, as XML is a data exchange format.
It is with respect to these considerations and others that the present invention has been made.